1/3, Friday night

Villain ($1800) is an early 20's, Asian male, who is talkative, arrogant, and very loose-aggressive both preflop and postflop, although he will fold some of the time to even more aggression. He is clearly the "table captain" and is arrogantly providing hand analysis out loud to the table. Overall, his play has not indicated that he would be +EV in the long-term, although he is not a fish. His stats are about VPIP 35/PFR 25/3B 10, although he flat calls a lot of raises 3bets also. He opens to $18 from the MP.

It's folded to Hero ($645) with Jh Jd in the small blind, who raises to $50.

Everyone folds except Villain who flat calls.


Flop ($103): 5h 4s 2h
Hero bets $75, Villain calls

Turn ($253): 8h
Hero bets $140, Villain calls

River ($433): Kh

What do you do?

Gross. I probably check/call in hopes he stabs with a K (doubtful) or worse heart. If you bet, it seems he will just fold worse and call with better. I can't quite fold to a bet from him, though.

Sorry, pot on the river is $533, and Hero has $380 behind.

Way too small pre oop. At least 4x it ($75) for value.
Down bet flop to get value from Ax floats or smaller pairs.
Turn eval but I x back for pot control.

As played, I'm on both ends of the spectrum to bet super tiny to induce a bluff shove, or the other way with a sigh x f.

My first instinct was check call, but what do we think he has that he might bluff with that he's called flop and turn with? Does he really show up here with unimproved over cards and no heart bigger than a jack?

I guess you could consider checking turn, but that probably makes the hand harder to play, not easier, when he inevitably bets

lol check/shove turn instilling maximum terror

he'll probably stay off your blinds after that, no matter the result

I don't mind the flop sizing - V has plenty of Ax we have to charge for wheel/combo draw.

Prefer to x this turn. You're never folding Ahx here without jamming. He has some straights & NFs already on this turn.

AP on river: Range for V - he would have raised all his 76s on the turn and all his sets too. V would have raised his AA, KK and perhaps QQ somewhere along the line. V likely raises his QhQx on this turn.

On river we get 2-1 if V jams. FE is a very minor consideration, so jamming is pointless. Betting is pointless too because we're targeting only ThTx/9h9x

This V sounds like a wise-ass fully capable of raising his AhQx on this turn and he's probably jamming his AhKx. It's possible he doesn't have a flush. I'd rather check to induce and get 2-1 or more on a call with my Jacks.

+1. More pre. Less flop. Because our raise was too small pre, we haven't defined his range so we should be checking this turn.

River we should rep some overpair w/ no heart so that we can potentially collect a bluff.

Preflop is tough, but we took the absolute worst route possible, imo. Our raise sizing offered very good IO of 20:1 to a difficult player in position and created an SPR 6 pot (where it will be difficult not to commit with an overpair, and yet he can often steal when we don't flop an overpair as he can easily threaten our stack). How often have we been 3betting out of the blinds? Is our hand face uppish? That ain't good if that's the case.

But our other preflop options kinda suck too. We could 3bet very large to create poor IO and lessen the SPR to one that negates his positional / skill (or at the very least difficulty) advantage. But how comfortable are we actually doing that with JJ 200bbs+ deep and with only a lol amount of trival dead money in the pot? I would consider just flatting. This will admittedly create difficult spots with overpairs facing multiple barrels OOP, and it's possible we might have to fold earlier than later and just let him have this one (but those will be relatively small mistakes in a smallish pot). Meanwhile a flat does allow us to setmine and possibly win some money. We could also consider a fold. We don't have to play a difficult player OOP just cuz we haz JJ.

Anyhoo, SPR is 6 and we're OOP against a difficult player who likely knows exactly where he's at on this somewhat drawy board. Do we feel committed? If so, we could overbet the flop to shove the turn (does protect against draws and overs and eliminates any difficult river play). We could check and call off bets for stacks against a wider betting range than calling range, but this risks uglier and uglier later streets where we'll be less comfortable with that plan.

With an SPR of 6, we really have to decide whether we are committed ASAP and then make our plan. Do we have one? Do we have a plan for what happens when he calls and a terrible card (such as this one) comes on the turn)? When we bet the turn after all the action we've shown, how often is he showing up with worse when he calls a bet versus checking to him and facing a bet?

I'm not really sure what to do on the river. Being OOP is more difficult, but some of the time we have a value hand here against stuff like sets / etc. while other times we have just a bluffcatcher.

GI'mnotconvincedwehadmuchofaplaninthishandothertha n"wehazJJ!"G

Pre was too small, should be $70 or so

Flop is big but it's fine to go big here. I don't think this is the best spot to downbet since we give him a profitable call with Ax, and vs a table captain I don't think he's folding a worse overpair to one bet so might as well make it big.

Turn seems like you can check or bet. We are still ahead of his range and can get value with a bet, but if we x/c turn I think he's going to have a hard time blasting off on a lot of rivers profitably. We have enough sigh calls with overpairs and slowplayed flushes. If he can shove the turn as a semibluff then it puts it close to a check.

River I am x/c and hoping for the best. He shouldn't have much Qh that shoves for value so we are only fading Ah which admittedly is quite a bit of his range (but not 70% of it so call is probably fine imo)

Flop i like a little smaller.

Ott either option is ok imo, x or bet. Sizing fine.

River obvious check and im probably not folding, but hating the spot

Wouldn’t it be ok to raise a little smaller OOP preflop if we are trying to target an aggro player who could dump his stack rather than take it down preflop

AP easiest shove in the world. Nice hand. No idea what the concern is? What Qh, Ah hands call flop? Guy has plenty of TT+, all of it them, other stuff that might've had you dead, just gii and if he snaps you lose.

You took an stackoff line once you 3/4 pot 245s and get a good (enough) turn. It's a cool hand assuming you can just 3b nutted stuff and empty the clip on good boards against this guy. Looks like you made that assessment and executed it well. Sure you might get owned a bit sometimes, but this runout is awfully good imo considering you just never have sets or straights like he does.

Pre atrociously small

Pretty much all of them Gutshot, two overs and bdfd, every self respecting lagtard is going to call flop.

Doesn't seem like a lagtard in description. Just running over a bunch of passive types. It's definitely a reach for him to call Ahx facing hero's line, but possible. He just should have a lot of decent hands here, perhaps even better hands that can't raise turn that just lost otr. If he's calling all those hands, then hero got a great flop and turn to pound, river is still a shove.

Yeah for sure some more there. Can't just give him a dream calling spot for free like hero did. I still like the line.

Someone said $70 for pre sizing. What is a good guideline for implied odds we want to give when sizing a re-raise pre?

With $70 is looks like we'd be laying 11 or 12:1 which is at the top end of the 5-10 rule for set mining odds. Seems reasonable to aim to make calling with any pocket pair not worth it but I'm curious what people's thoughts are.

Depends how conservative we are, how difficult our opponent is, our incapability of folding an overpair in a small SPR pot, our position, etc.

I'm conservative, so if I'm going to setup a small SPR where I don't feel I'll be able to fold an overpair, I typically aim for 8:1 IO. This is right on setmining odds and of course offers even worse for other hands, and of course setminers will even have a horrendous time (as I'm not stacking off with JJ on an Axx flop when they flop their set, I'll beat them sometimes when the flop their set, etc.).

But this is admittedly super conservative, so if you're more comfortable offering better IO then that's up to you. But here we'll be OOP to a difficult player, so I'm not so sure we want to offer too liberal of IO.

GcluelessIOnoobG

Just don’t choose a sizing that lets him inexpensively play his entire opening range against our narrow linear one, not at 200bb+ deep.

Thank you all for your input.
Yes, I should have 3bet more pre.

My plan on the river was to check-call. I check, and he shoves, as expected.
I call and he had Ah Ks and wins with a bigger flush. He floated me with overcards and then went runner-runner.